More on the CrossRef-Google collaboration. Barbara Quint, CrossRef Search Uses Google to Provide Full-Text Access, Information Today, May 3, 2004. Excerpt: "CrossRef, a 300-member publisher trade association, has announced a pilot project called CrossRef Search that will enable users to search the full text of scholarly journal articles, conference proceedings, and other sources from nine leading publishers. Google will supply the search technologies and CrossRef the reference links to publisher Web sites....[The nine] initial publishers produce some 1,100 journals, according to [CrossRef executive director Ed] Pentz....The initial pilot will last throughout 2004. CrossRef plans to gather feedback from scientists, scholars, and librarians through e-mail forms and formal evaluations using external consultants....There are only two rules for joining the pilot program, according to Pentz. 'The publisher has to have all their content indexed through the way Google indexes and make the search box available to everyone at no charge.'...CrossRef has put no requirements on access issues. Each publisher can apply its own economic model, even if it does not include a pay-per-view option. Nor, during the initial phase, were there any mechanisms for guiding users to library holdings to which they might have ?appropriate copy? access. End-users, therefore, might find themselves reading abstracts for material they can find no way to access. Pentz believes that most of the nine initial participants offer some form of pay-per-view as do two-thirds of CrossRef?s members." [Open Access News]
8:16:38 AM    

CrossRef-Google offer free searching of full-text research articles. CrossRef and Google have announced a partnership that allows Google to search the full texts of peer-reviewed research articles. The service is free of charge and includes current and back issues from participating publishers. From today's press release: "CrossRef Search is available to all users, free of charge, on the websites of participating publishers, and encompasses current journal issues as well as back files. The results are delivered from the regular Google index but filter out everything except the participating publishers' content, and will link to the content on publishers' websites via DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) or regular URLs. CrossRef itself doesn't host any content or perform searches - CrossRef works behind the scenes with Google to facilitate the crawling of content on publishers' sites and sets the policies and guidelines governing publisher participation in the initiative. As well as enabling CrossRef Search, the partnership with Google also means that full-text content from the publishers is also referenced by the main Google.com index in its more general searches." Participating publishers so far include the American Physical Society, the ACM, Blackwell, Institute of Physics, Nature Publishing Group, Oxford, and Wiley. [Open Access News]
8:16:19 AM